unremarked)http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/24/far-right-terrorismThe vision of a black president has given the racist far right one of its biggest boosts since the civil rights era of the 1960s. Figures toted up by the Southern Poverty Law Centre suggest a dramatic rise in the numbers of organized groups: their numbers grew by 40% from 2008 to 2009, and an additional 22% from 2009 to 2010, bringing the total to 2,145 groups. It's difficult to know precisely what these numbers mean, since these groups are constantly changing names, dissolving, reforming or springing up, and few of them maintain public membership rolls.
What is nonetheless clear is that a strong far right movement has re-emerged, and what unites it is the age-old American doctrine of nativism, born out of fear of some dark outsider sneaking in to steal the white man's homeland and his hegemony.Nativist thinkers are spread all over the map, but the strongest current comes in the form of the Sovereign Citizen movement, or what used to be called the Posse Comitatus and before the posse, the Silver Shirts. For the old Posse adherents and their contemporary progeny, the white Aryan man is the only true "sovereign" over his land and his life. White women serve beneath him; black and brown "mud people" are menials worthy only of disdain; and Jews (who do not qualify as white) are usually behind it all, running the economic and financial systems through a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. They do not admit to being subject to the laws and dicates of the US government; they eschew social security, cars and drivers' licences, and won't pay taxes.
Different facets of the nativist movement have enjoyed periodic heydeys in 20th-century America – first in the 1910s and 20s, when anti-immigrant sentiments were rife and membership in the Ku Klux Klan reached more than 2m.
In the 1930s and 1940s, they penetrated the edges of the political mainstream through figures like Father Charles Coughlin, who was the Glenn Beck of his day. A Catholic priest and radio personality, Coughlin was at once enormously popular and virulently antisemitic and anti-New Deal. His ally Gerald LK Smith, leader of the Share Our Wealth campaign, was evocative of some of today's more extreme Tea Party candidates.
Historically, federal law enforcement has given little credence to the power of the nativist current in American society, and has paid relatively little attention to the activities of nativist groups. That has perhaps changed since the election of Barack Obama, whose presidency has so focused and emboldened the racist far right. Yet, despite their obvious threat, there are no competitors to Peter King, holding congressional hearings on the recruitment of homegrown jihadist terrorists.
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